Alice Paul of New Jersey, head of the National Women’s Party, faced three increasingly more difficult hurdles on the road to passage of the constitutional amendment that would give all women the vote in the election of 1920. Passage by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the Senate, and ratification by three-fourths of the states, would finally bring her victory, but time was very short.

When Congress was called into special session in May 1918, the first action taken was passage of the 19th Amendment.